Racialism

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30212, 17 August 1963, Page 3

Racialism

The Desegregated Heart. By Sarah Patton Boyle. Victor Gollancz. 364 pp.

This is a moving documentary of a white woman in Virginia who struggled against great odds to win Virginians to accept the Negro as a fellow citizen and not as an inferior person. Sarah Patton Boyle, wife of a faculty member of Virginia University, cared for her Negro servants in her home until things happened that opened her eyes. A Negro lawyer sought admission to the University. She stood up for him but wondered why he was so aloof It took years for her to realise that the Negro does not want paternalism but equality. Her newspaper and magazine articles evoked such opposition, not from the Negroes but from the White South, that she was dismayed Her friends became cruel and many despised her. For year; she battered against the barrier erected between th( races The spite and cruelt? of the whites to her is almos beyond belief. Her champion ship of the Negro brough 'etters that were scurrilous bitter and obscene. “M.’ hope," she writes, “that ‘th’ people’ would rise and re cover the Southern Drean <of graciousness and charm died a slow and groan ini death." Even after th« Supreme Court had declarer for desegregation, the Whites continued to pursue her with bitterness Her religious j faith broke and she found (herself without anchor; “I didn’t believe in anything." She recovered her personal faith and found it a bigger thing than she had previously known. The title of the book is an exact record of her experience. It was her heart that threw off segregation. This is a story of compassion and utter honesty.